


Whoops.  (Or — Devil’s Game)

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Cuphead (Video Game), Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Don't Deal With the Devil!, Friendship, Gambling, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 07:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21223217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Spinel and Steven head down to play a while at the Devil’s Casino.  How badly can it go?(Steven Universe-Cuphead crossover.)





	Whoops.  (Or — Devil’s Game)

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya!!! I hope you enjoy this, if you read it -- I'm sorry for any and all mistakes I might've made. Some creative liberties were taken here, but I definitely had fun writing it. It's kinda just... "Let's put Spinel and Steven in Cuphead and Mugman's roles," to be honest.
> 
> Thank you, and I hope you have a fantastic day!!! :D

It wasn’t that Spinel and her pal Steven were known for being troublemakers or anything like that_._ Honest! Sure they built treehouse forts in the snickering and occasionally-aggressive forest when maybe Elder Pearl woulda wanted them to be doing their chores, and yeah they stayed out fishing longer than they were supposed to sometimes... They even wandered off to the carnival every now and then. But they weren’t playing at anything dangerous, in the up-to-no-good parts of the Inkwell Isles. Not usually. Spinel could look you right in the pie-cut eyes and say all that, cross her technicolor heart. They played and worked around the house and figured things out well as they could now that they’d all been left behind. They didn’t head out to King Dice and the Devil’s Casino until... well. Until just recently, now that you mention it. 

It was strange looking back on things, after the deal had been struck. Spinel would remember the feel of those dice rattling around all light and airy in her gloved palm like a car crash. So final, irreversible, and over heart-shuddering fast. It was like accidentally tipping the inkwell over so everything dissolved into drippy stains and sour smells, transformed in an instant. There’d be no gathering all that ink back home, not easily, no matter what she did next. 

Spinel had been trying to get Steven out of the house for a little while. Isn’t that funny? She’d been trying to make him laugh. Make them _both_ laugh. That’s what she’d always done, even before her Best Friend left them all. Pink Diamond had meant so much to everyone, though of course Steven couldn’t properly remember her. She had been Spinel’s entire world. Spinel was a stretchy rubber clown in just the same way as Elder Pearl was an only-slightly-chipped porcelain ballerina. She had been supposed to make Pink Diamond laugh. That’s what Spinel’d been drawn for, ya know, before the script got changed. Before everything went so wrong. 

The home where they all lived together was still called Pink Diamond’s Garden, over at the edge of the first Inkwell Isle. The wistful, drifting flowers Pink had planted still bloomed all over the place, and there were portraits of her smiling softly down from the mantel that Elder Pearl dusted every morning. Spinel could go days and days without crying over Pink Diamond by now, but getting to this point really hadn’t been easy... and that didn’t mean she _never_ cried, anyway. 

And when Spinel’d had those dice in her hand... 

When the Devil was breathing down her neck, the room sharp with smoke, the oily woozy glow of the gambling hall swallowing her up...

Oh, no. 

Spinel hadn’t even heard Steven calling her name, then. She’d barely felt him tugging on her wiggly boneless arm, trying to pull her back to him. Back to his side, and out the door into the crisp night air. Steven was built out of delicately-cut diamond and flowers, just like Pink had been. Or still was, maybe, wherever she’d gone? Steven had seen the desperation in Spinel’s eyes and been _so scared_, he told her. He said it was like she’d gotten poisoned, though of course it woulda taken some super toxic stuff to eat away at _her_ rubber insides. 

“Spinel, it’s not worth it!” she would hear that Steven had said, later. After it was too late to go back. “I know you love her — I, _I_ wanna talk to her too — but it’s not worth _you_...!”

In hindsight, there were all kindsa things Spinel could have suggested they go out and do, that night when Steven had seemed lonely and quiet, wrapped up someplace in his head where no one could follow him. They’d just all felt kinda... _done_ before. She had wanted to see Steven’s curiosity and surprise. She’d wanted to come up with a shiny new game. 

Of course, Spinel hadn’t really known what the Devil’s Casino would be _like_. It was all carnival games, wasn’t it? All fancy carnival games, and a sparkly building, and she and Steven could learn a couple new tricks with cards. 

“Wanna go check it out? Play some games, head back?” Spinel had asked. She’d been flopped over upside down on one of Mother Pearl’s rocking chairs, tossing her legs back and forth, the chair creaking like a cozy floral-print boat beneath her. She’d twisted out an elastic arm and booped Steven’s nose. “Y’look so dang _sad_.”

And, “I _have_ been wondering what the casino’s like inside,” Steven mused. Geez, but he was exhausted! His flowery bits were all wilty. “Lars says he’s seen it and it’s great, but so great we wouldn’t understand it.”

Lars was a grumpy guy made out of cake doughnut, who rebaked and frosted himself every night. Spinel didn’t get why Steven liked him so much. She went, “Psh. What does _he_ know? Of course we’d get it.”

And so they’d gone. It had felt harmless, at the time. They snuck away to check out the casino, true, but that was mostly just ‘cause Elder Pearl didn’t really care for anything messy or unwieldy and Steven didn’t wanna worry her. ... Mostly ‘cause Elder Pearl had warned them about the Devil before, too, though, to be honest... and all the many promises he kept tucked up his sleeves like so many winning cards. Ready to slip out right when he needed ‘em. Except the Devil didn’t really _have_ sleeves, huh? It was King Dice in that snappy suit!

Elder Pearl had said the Devil would always know what a person wanted most, what drove them and burned them and made them ache with wanting. Elder Pearl had said it, and she’d “tsk”-ed under her breath, and she’d assured Steven and Spinel that everything had been so much _cleaner_ before this particular casino turned up. She appreciated games of skill far more than games of chance, anyhow, herself. Maybe one of them would get a kick outta fencing with her instead, hm? You wouldn’t think Mother Pearl could do so much damage with a porcelain blade, but, welp — you’d be wrong! 

Spinel remembered what it had been like before the casino came, too, even if Elder Pearl forgot she would, sometimes. But then... that was _also_ before Pink Diamond had left them, wasn’t it? The whole world felt blurry and gold-tinted then, like whoever drew the Inkwell Isles to life had been using a different set of paints. 

Spinel knew the Devil kept to such sly and hungry ways, and she knew King Dice’s games were fun. _So many _games were fun, and Spinel and Steven ended up finagling their ways out of all sorts of situations, day to day. Lotsa hijinks; lotsa fast talking and wise-cracking and ducking away when the time came to make tracks. Spinel just hadn’t thought...

You never know what the stakes are until they’re drawn, you see? You never know you won’t manage to drag yourself away from those stakes, either, until you _just don’t,_ and you can’t see how your roll will come up until the dice have left your palm. There they go, bouncing over that taunting velvet table, and all the skeleton gamblers come clattering around. Theirs was the shakiest, most bones-on-a-chalkboard laughter Spinel had ever heard. Poor things. Who knew what _they’d_ lost at the Devil’s tables, too, to leave only their bones behind? 

Things had been easy enough, at first. Spinel and Steven had ordered sweet fizzing drinks and won enough cash that Steven was already plotting out everybody’s birthday presents. (Don’t ask how any of them were _born_, exactly, by the way — their origins tended to shift around depending on what worked for the stories they woke up in. There were some constants, of course: Spinel was always a clown, and they’d always been left behind, and Steven cared so much for everyone around them all the time.) 

But then... there were _reasons_ why the Devil managed to set up so many contracts, all across the Inkwell Isles. Spinel would meet too many of those gambled souls, before this game was through. Sometimes people sold their souls to stay together, like Ruby and Sapphire, who had been a frosted-over lake and a campfire, once, but grew to love each other very much. Sometimes people sold their souls for vengeance or purpose or selfhood, or to belong, like someone made of drippy rock-candy bright slime who could take on a hundred different faces but... in the end... turned out to be a short girl called “Amethyst,” wearing her hair in her face. 

_Everybody wanted something_. Maybe all the Devil had to do was figure out the right price, to drag ‘em all down. 

When the Devil came to Spinel and Steven’s table, he offered riches and connections and all kindsa lofty things, and they shrugged them away. Said maybe it was time to head back home; said if they left now, they might still be able to pick up an ice cream or something. Catch fireflies or what have you before Elder Pearl started worrying after them. 

That could have been everything. 

That could have been the end of it. 

But you _know_ it isn’t, don’t you? 

Spinel hadn’t come to the Devil’s Casino for half the gambling hall’s wealth, or all of it, or even King Dice’s own bejeweled slippers. She had come sauntering in to be Steven’s friend. She had only ever wanted to be a friend, and the Devil knew that, just like he so often knew. 

When the Devil held up a mirror showing Pink Diamond’s face, Spinel stopped dead in her tracks. Her rubbery jaw fell open. Tears stung the back of her eyes, as if they’d never completely left. She hadn’t seen her Best Friend _move_ in so long — it looked almost like Pink Diamond might actually _speak_, and there was a soft wind in her hair, and when she saw Spinel peering through the mirror-glass her eyes went curious and warm — 

“Haven’t you wanted to know why she did it? _Where she went?_” the Devil asked.

He didn’t even have to speak Pink Diamond’s name. Yeah. Yeah, of course Spinel had wondered.

“If you could talk to her again... if you could be with her, even in some strange new way, through a mirror like this one... I wonder what you’d gamble. Your own soul? Someone else’s, too? An entire world?” 

Spinel had worked hard to get to the point where she didn’t dissolve into messy tears so much of the time, where she didn’t lash out at Elder Pearl and then feel crummy about it, where she was able to have fun with Steven from day to day to day. Spinel had worked hard to reclaim who she was. She chipped away at it all the time, like trying to dig enormous dinosaur bones out of the garden. (Elder Pearl had been really upset about her petunias.)

But even as she was telling herself, _“That’s not really her. Don’t get your hopes up. You can’t actually believe this, can ya?” _Spinel felt her old fury and hurt coursing its way back through her. It was like music too loud to work her mind around — it was powerful as a new heartbeat. _Why had Pink left them all behind? _What had been going through her head, and did she regret it, and why didn’t she ever come back, and... and... and...

And if this really _was_ Pink Diamond in the mirror, balanced tenderly in the Devil’s crooked hands, how could she look so calm about all this mess? How, after all this time, could Pink Diamond look so innocently happy to see her old friend? 

“Nobody’s soul but mine, pal,” Spinel spat. “Gimme those dice.”

When Spinel signed her name, she didn’t feel Steven’s hands trying to pry the pen away from her, or notice the skeleton gamblers dragging him off to the side. When Spinel rolled her dice, she didn’t hear Steven calling her name. This was rage and wanting like poison. Probably the Devil had gambled on a poison just like this. 

Snake eyes, though. Spinel rolled snake eyes, and whatever that mirror had been — whether it held a link to Pink Diamond tight inside or not, whether it would’ve consumed her or made her laugh or what — it got itself slipped back into the Devil’s secret trove. 

That’s all, folks. 

But not really. 

When Spinel shook herself back awake, back into the living world filled with skeletons gambling in fancy hats, full of bouncing jazzy music and the taste of expensive sweetness filling her mouth like too-ripe fruit, Steven was still there, and he had forced his way back to her side. He was holding her arm _so tightly._ His fingers were shaking, but Spinel knew anyone would’ve had to pry them off her. Steven had lost Pink Diamond, too, y’know, even if he didn’t realize everything that meant. He wasn’t gonna lose Spinel, now, too. 

He was still saying her name, voice strangled but also... somehow... hopeful. Steven talked to Spinel until she turned to look at him, eyes gone swimmy and stricken and far away. Steven waved his fingers in front of her face, said, “Can you... are you with me?” 

Spinel nodded. “What’ve I done?” she offered. It felt like giving a couple mangled dandelions for a gift, two weeks after somebody’s birthday. It felt like a question Steven shouldn’t have to answer. 

“We can fix it,” Steven told her. “We’re gonna fix it.”

The Devil snickered, then. He was still holding Spinel’s contract, remember, paper singing under his fingers, sour smoke and oilslick-ink. “How are you planning to do that?” he asked. Like he was inquiring after the weather on a sunny day. 

And Steven stood up a little taller, then. Both Pink Diamond’s familiar son and someone stronger than Spinel thought maybe anybody knew. 

“You know better than I do,” Steven said to the Devil, and to King Dice, too, and all that slithering casino, “How everybody wants something. Always. Even you, right?”

“Right,” said the Devil, and in his eyes there were inkblot cartoon eons. Who could imagine everything a creature like this one might want? The Devil had so many soul contracts, and a hell-kingdom someplace Spinel couldn’t completely imagine, and a glittering casino towering up over most of the Inkwell Isles. The Devil had Pink Diamond, maybe, waiting in a mirror. 

But he _also_ had a lot of unanswered dues. A lot of debtors it’d be a pain to make come pay up their tabs. Steven figured all that out, ‘cause he was willing to barter. He talked like he’d be standing right with Spinel every step of the way; he begged for a chance to save her, looking the Devil in his own laughing eyes and never even once mentioning that it’d been Spinel’s idea to come here in the first place, and it was her debt, and he’d never truly known Pink Diamond in all his life. 

Steven was scared. Spinel could tell he was, even if he smiled tightly at her when he noticed how she was watching his face. When had he gotten so brave?

They were gonna collect the soul contracts of the doomed. Of people just like Spinel, who had wanted too horribly at just the wrong moment. Yellow Diamond, who traded her soul to erase a loved one’s pain, and Lapis Lazuli, who traded her soul to get home, and White Diamond, who traded her soul to scrub away all her possible imperfections. One by one, Steven and Spinel would have to steal their gambled names away. 

When Spinel squirmed in her floppy jester shoes over that nasty business, murmuring, “Steven, aw, no, you know I can’t let you do that, yer such a good guy —” Steven squeezed her arm and winked, where the Devil couldn’t quite see. 

Whatever the heck you could make of _that_, it did get Spinel feeling like maybe there could be a way out, even now. Maybe there was more to this plan Steven was cooking up; maybe there was a trapdoor away from damnation after all. It wouldn’t be easy, but Spinel trusted Steven, didn’t she? Even if sometimes... even if right now... she was finding it sorta hard to trust herself. 

Wouldn’t be easy, though. Couldn’t be. They’d have to go tell Elder Pearl what’d happened, too, and even just that all by itself wasn’t gonna be pretty. 

But if Spinel’s legs went out from under her now, she knew Steven would catch her. She’d just have to do her best to catch him back if he needed it, wouldn’t she? 


End file.
